Adapting to change

I’ve been thinking about resilience and adapting to change recently, and was chatting to my husband about it. We agreed that many people struggle to adapt to change – his parents did, for example. He laughed, and pointed out how much it annoys us when the supermarket changes its layout, or drops some of our favourite things. “That’s just irritating,” I said.  Infuriating, even, I will admit to you now! But it doesn’t make me afraid, in the way I see that change makes some people afraid.

Adapting to change is really hard. Covid was scary enough, and there are changes all over the world right now, both positive and negative, that has various groups reeling at the thought of it. Change can be good, or it can be bad, on individual or societal levels. When I think of my own personal situation, most change I have adapted to in my life has been positive, even if it was very scary at times. I’m thinking about the changes and opportunities as a result of second wave feminism, my student exchange, and the various career opportunities that have come my way. Even then, I slowly adapted to the idea that having children would be a good idea. And I wholeheartedly embraced it.

Until, of course, I had to adapt to the idea that a) I was infertile, and b) I would remain childless throughout my life. That change was a huge adjustment. Even though, for much of my adult life up to then, I had not been affected by the fact I did not yet have children, I had assumed I could have them if I wanted to do so. Equally, I had not contemplated my life without them.

Adjusting to that change was hard. Hard, because it involved a number of issues around self-confidence, including feelings of being unworthy and of guilt, as well as the external reactions of others – judgement, isolation from society’s mainstream, condescension, etc. It required not just an adjustment to the idea of my place in society, but an adjustment in how I saw myself. Ultimately, though, learning to change the way I saw myself and society and my life was what helped me to be able to embrace the life I have. I learned to appreciate my life, and to be grateful for what I have.

I look at people who can’t adjust to changes in their lives. Whether it is the white man who feels his status in life is threatened, or those who can never pull out of the grief of not getting what they had always wanted, or those who can’t adjust to inevitable changes, there are plenty of examples of people who are change resistant. My father-in-law, for example, struggled with getting old, grieving the years of fitness that he had lost decades earlier, rather than feeling grateful for what he still had (eg a brain that still functioned, family, his wife, relative longevity, etc).

Frankly, I pity them. Because the one thing I’ve learned about my own resilience is that fighting against change is painful. It hurts to always want something that we know we’ll never have. In comparison, learning to be grateful for what we have, looking forward to what we know is achievable, and finding joy in the moment all feel so much better than an impossible yearning. Isn’t that the key to living a better life, to enjoying ourselves, to being compassionate and understanding?